Fleet Management

Ohio Turnpike Takes Actions to Cut Down on Trucker Toll Fraud

Ohio Turnpike officials have set up a system to stop a longtime scam that truckers have used to short the roadway's automated payment machines $50,000 or more on a yearly basis.

According to The Plain Dealer, some truckers would scam the system by pretending to lose the initial ticket they received when entering onto the Ohio turnpike near Indiana. When a trucker would come to the final turnpike before Pennsylvannia, he would pay a $44 fee for losing his ticket -- the same fee he would pay for the full turnpike length anyway.

Later on, after the trucker came back through Ohio, he would exit the turnpike prior to where he initially entered onto the turnpike in Indiana. Here he would use his original ticket in an automated fare machine. The machine would read the ticket and would only charge the driver for the "short" distance that he drove from the state line with Pennsylvania.

The automated fare machine would only charge the driver a toll of $10 or less depending on where the driver exited the turnpike, according to the paper.

Toll collectors are more than likely going to notice the scam, but the automated fare machines, while they recorded the long time frame between entry and exit, previously were not stopping the driver.

According to The Plain Dealer, however, turnpike officials fixed the problem in late July by having the automated fare machine charge the trucker the full fee to cross the state if the duration of time between the entry and exit exceeds a certain amount of time. They're not telling just how long that period of time is.